Summer 09 Travel Trends: Skyscanner Reveals Winners and Losers of British Tourist Traffic

September 30th, 2009 EDINBURGH - - Former MD of match.com Jason Stockwood Joins Skyscanner Board Former Managing Director of match.com Jason Stockwood has joined travel search site Skyscanner's board as a non-executive director, providing input and insight to the company's development of a global market-leading brand. Stockwood announced his departure from the leading dating site last week and confirmed his intention to concentrate on NXD roles.

September 16th, 2009 LONDON - As summer holidays fast become a distant memory, Britons have plunged in to a state of melancholy, reveals a new survey by TripAdvisor(R), the world's most popular and largest travel community. The survey of 600 British travellers reveals that a staggering 85 percent maintain that their stress-levels return to pre-holiday highs within one month or less of returning home from their summer trips, whilst almost half of these - 41 percent - find that their stresses return within just one week of being back.

August 31st, 2009 LUTON, England - Despite the reported growth of the 'staycation', the poor British weather this summer has once again fallen foul of people's expectations and in a desperate attempt to catch some sun, a recent online survey by www.monarch.co.uk has revealed that 70% of UK holidaymakers are now planning to book a late holiday deal and travel abroad. The poll, which ran on www.monarch.co.uk, asked visitors to the site if the bad British weather had influenced their holiday plans this year.

August 17th, 2009 EDINBURGH, Scotland - Travel search site Skyscanner today launched a brand new holiday search function (www.skyscanner.net/holidays) which brings together the holiday offerings of over 20 leading suppliers, including Thomas Cook, Airtours, On The Beach, Virgin Holidays and Monster Travel. From today users can now search from 35 million holidays worldwide on the Skyscanner site.

July 6th, 2009 SYDNEY - Travel search site Skyscanner has launched new hotel search functionality at www.skyscanner.net/hotels. Powered by HotelsCombined, the hotel search function allows Skyscanner users to search over 200,000 hotels across 195 countries, comparing prices from the biggest suppliers in the business such as Holiday Inn, Hilton, Booking.com, Hotels.com and LateRooms.com.

June 8th, 2009 EDINBURGH - Visitor Traffic on Skyscanner up 85% Cheap flight site Skyscanner (www.Skyscanner.net) saw an unprecedented spike in user traffic last month (May 09), reflecting a surge of late bookings which has led to record visitor numbers. Typically Skyscanner experiences its highest levels of user traffic at the start of the year, with the majority of people booking their summer holidays during January and February.

May 27th, 2009 LONDON - This summer, DialAFlight have teamed up with United Airlines to offer free children's fares to a whole host of US destinations. Only taxes and surcharges will apply to the ticket.

April 26th, 2009 EDINBURGH - Data from leading flight search company Skyscanner (www.Skyscanner.net) shows that travellers planning trips to Mexico have so far been undeterred by the outbreak of swine flu influenza announced by Mexico's Federal Health Ministry on the 22nd April. "Dire predictions have already been made about the impact that this will have on tourism, but the number of Skyscanner users searching for flights to Mexico has remained stable in the days since news emerged of the outbreak," said Skyscanner director and co-founder Barry Smith.

April 22nd, 2009 EDINBURGH - Data from leading flight search engine, Skyscanner (www.Skyscanner.net), shows that London has become the most popular May Day holiday weekend flight destination for Brits this year. Last year, London ranked only 6th most popular, but has now rocketed up the charts displacing Amsterdam as the number one most searched for flight destination on Skyscanner for the early May bank holiday period.

April 1st, 2009 EDINBURGH - Year on Year Growth at end of First Quarter is 87% Leading European flight search engine Skyscanner today announced a 54% year on year increase in site traffic for the first quarter of 2009. More than 50 million flight searches take place each month on the Skyscanner site - 65% of these from outside the UK.

July 20th, 2009 Harry Potter landmarks: Train stations to castlesEDINBURGH, Scotland — Jump on a broomstick (or a plane) and head to the United Kingdom to visit landmarks associated with Harry Potter. With the latest film installment in the series, "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," now in theaters, the Scotland-based travel-search Web site Skyscanner.com has come up with a list of places that will be sure to enchant Potter fans.

January 2nd, 2009 LONDON - British comic Ricky Gervais has called England a nation of losers and believes Americans are more confident. According to thesun.co.uk, Gervais in an interview was asked why British actors often played misfit characters.

April 17th, 2009 MANALI - With the arrival of summer, the hill town of Manali in Himachal Pradesh witnesses a rush of foreign and domestic tourists. Manali is Himachal Pradesh's main summer destination for backpackers, trekkers and partygoers escaping the summer heat.

May 16th, 2009 NEW DELHI - Prominent winners and losers in the Lok Sabha election: WINNERS: Sonia Gandhi, Rae Bareli, Uttar Pradesh Rahul Gandhi, Amethi, Uttar Pradesh L.K. Advani, Gandhinagar Lalu Prasad, Saran, Bihar Rajnath Singh, Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh Mamata Banerjee, Kolkata Dakshin Varun Gandhi, Pilibhit, Uttar Pradesh H.D.

July 3rd, 2009 COLOMBO - The British government has relaxed travel restrictions on its citizens visiting Sri Lanka nearly five weeks after Tamil separatist rebels were defeated to end a more then 30-year war in the South Asian country, the British high commission in Colombo said Friday. Britain, which had imposed restrictions for its citizens to some of the popular tourist destinations on the southern and eastern coasts of the country, said in a statement that it would no longer discourage British people from visiting those areas.

March 12th, 2009 LONDON - US president Barack Obama has landed himself in the top spot of the nominations for this year's British Book Awards after he was shortlisted for both author and biography of the year. Obama's political book, The Audacity of Hope, and his life story, Dreams from My Father, became UK bestsellers while he was running for office in 2008, reports the BBC.

February 26th, 2009 NEW DELHI - Eyeing the increasing number of Indian tourists to Britain, the British tourism authority Wednesday launched a new initiative to facilitate their travel to the country. The authority, VisitBritain, launched a range of popular travel products that travellers can buy in India before flying to Britain.

June 20th, 2009 SHIMLA - Many foreign tourists in Himchal Pradesh, which lures hordes of backpackers every summer, say they are scared and worried about their safety following the alleged gang rape of a British teenager in the popular tourist destination of Palampur in Kangra district. The 18-year-old British girl, who was teaching poor children in the region as part of an exchange programme, alleged that she was repeatedly raped by two men Thursday night.

September 17th, 2009 GANGTOK - Travel agents in Sikkim are a worried lot, as they fear a dip in domestic tourist arrivals in the state following the tension that prevails after reports of Chinese incursion and aggression along the international border. "From the tourist point of view the tourism movement...there seems to be lot of fear amongst the countrymen especially the domestic tourists because no body likes to go to a war zone," said Satish Bardewa, proprietor, Yak and Yeti Tour and Travel.

June 16th, 2009 IATA: Premium travel dropped 22 percent in AprilMINNEAPOLIS — More evidence emerged Tuesday that a bad economy pushes passengers to the back of the plane, as a trade group reported that traffic in the high-end airline seats fell 22 percent in April. Revenue from those passengers fell even faster, down an estimated 44 percent from April 2008, the International Air Transport Association reported.